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First Ever Radar Images Of Main-Belt Asteroid
Phrogman writes: "NASA and astronomers at Cornell have collected the first ever radar images of a main-belt asteroid, a metallic, dog-bone shaped rock the size of New Jersey named Asteroid 216 Kleopatra. There is an article here with more information and a small image."
Can they run linux on that satellite? Maybe all the asteroids could be combined into a beowulf cluster/planet. are these open source images? What about DeCSS? Metallica's lawyers haven't reviewed this yet but they think you violated their copyright in some way...
And turn that into the international space station. 135 miles long... Lots of space =-]
Firs question: Why are we just now getting radar images of these asteroids? Too much debris? Or are the asteroids too small to be able to record until now (arecibo)?
Second question: Is this really that important of a discovery?
Nothing really earth-shattering here..move along.
~Steve
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~Steve
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"<r-xr-xr-x> Just try to edit me" -- www.ircnews.com
Couldn't resist. Slap my wrists now.
There's no reason for a sig here.
And now we can all fear the day when the dog remembers where it buried it.
seeing as their budget cuts just seem to keep coming, and they arent exactlly the most effecient when it comes to operating costs, never mind the high cost "oops". I guess pretty pictures are the only thing that keeps NASA afloat right now. "lets see, we can crash these probes into Mars and hope those airbags that GM sold us inflate. Hell, even if they dont, we'll just snap some pretty pictures of some rocks, stir up public interest about them, cry about russia not pulling its weight on that wizz-bang new space station, and viola, back in the green again"
...and the geek shall inherit the earth...
www.linux-skunkworks.com
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/kleopatra/
i dont know if anyone else is, but i am extremely impressed by things like this. can someone(who knows what they are talking about) explain just how the hell this is done? I mean its 135 miles long and 106 MILLION MILES AWAY!!! how can you possibly point a relatively tiny radio telescope projecting a thin beam of radio waves, at something THAT far away and get a sense of its shape.
If the bone is of the size of New Jersey, imagine the size of the dog!! Let's just hope that if cosmic dog ever comes, big puppy won't wanna play with the big blue ball...
And MSNBC gets the award for stupidest headline with their report on this story, entitled 'Telescope spots huge space bone'.
Was it wrong that it took me five minutes to stop laughing at this?
-Mad Dreamer
We all know that radar has it's limited capabilities (such as the ones listed above) and one of these is that radar likes round things.. Thus planes are built in such away (without round[ed] edges) to avoid detection from radar.
Is it possible that we're missing anything out there (especially relatively close stuff) using radar because of the objects shape?
Granted, we probably pick the object up on another wave length (visible light, radio, gamma, x-ray, etc), but it should be pointed out that radar does have it's negatives.
~Steve
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~Steve
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"<r-xr-xr-x> Just try to edit me" -- www.ircnews.com
Earth is a planet
(/Serious post)
Well anyways looking at the picture ... a dog bone THAT big had to take one helluva arm to throw ... I mean imagine the size of the dog ... would the earth be the size of a large beach ball in comparison?
Guess you'd have to know the size of the dog first ... lets say it's a great dane (erm GALATICAL great dane rather). And it's name is Super Spot.
Now if you were Super Spot wouldn't it piss you off to have to run from universe to universe to run after this thing? I mean heck I dun even like to run period, let alone at like warp 8 ...
Let's consider there really is no dog that is bigger than jupiter (Really going out on a limb here). Then let's consider someone really likes to write with HEAVY sarcasm. And this person makes really NO sense and mentally notes the joke is going no where ....
erm ... I'm done now :-)
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Reasons to choose Kassandra 216 over New Jersey: 1. The air is better for you. We may not have any, but at least it isn't a carcinogen! 2. Fewer pissed off commuters. You need more than a rusted out El Camino to make it here! 3. No chance of seeing Hillary Clinton on the Channel 3 news. 200 million miles precludes seeing any network television at all!! 4. We have only the finest quality low G accomidations! Well, since we have the ONLY low G accomidations.. 5. Tell your grandkids about it! "When I was your age, we had to hop a leaky Russian capsule for four years, then we had to eat a lump of dry poison." 6. Complimentary Continental breakfast for the first 100 visitors!
.sig: Now legally binding!
Pretty nifty (not real exciting) - though it *is* 5MB... glad I'ev got a cable modem. 75+K/s sustained - whoo-hoo! Not /.'d yet.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Well, they've spotted it... I wonder how long until asteroid mining becomes somewhat feasible? An interesting question will be which becomes more valuable to mine from space... ore, or ice? (as Earth pollutes its water supplies).
Then there's the tantalizing possibility of heavier metals... i.e. gold... in some of those asteroids.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
Once radar was resolved, the LAPD sprang into action and pulled the asteroid over for speeding and gave it some of their famous oldfashioned-loving with a 25-mile billy club. :-)
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I know you're just trolling for a responce but I'm going to answer anyway because a lot of people seem to be thinking the same thing.
This is news for nerds. It's news that applies a technology in ways that wasn't possible before an now is. It's news about people pressing their equipment to the edge to get results. And it's news about science and space exploration. This is the sort of thing that IS News for Nerds.
Sure it's not important to our day-to-day lives. But who cares?
News that effects everybody in thier day to day lives is NOT news for nerds. Recently people seem to think that this site should be about legal technicalities and stock quotes. Somehow this new "Geek Trend" has swept up people who should be reading CNN.com or News.yahoo.com.
Ok, I'm done ranting now.
"JPL images are available for use by the public free of charge."
(NASA is a governmental agency, of course)
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
I think it is definitely time to start a pool
How many posts until the first Scoobie Doo post
Oh damn...
Now on a more ontopic question how metalic is this thing? I assume that one day it will probably be cost effective to mine such a beast. Are there any visionaries out there that have an idea how much infrastructure will be needed before this sort of thing becomes remotely possible. A hollowed out rock this size would probably make a pretty nice colony. We have a choice we can sit in/on one place with all of our eggs in one basket^H^H^H^H^H^Hbullseye^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hplanet waiting for a similar rock to hit it, or we can spread our species out onto other smaller targets.
We need a real space program. Taking pictures and firing scrap metal at Mars is OK, but, we need a space program with a real strategy to avoid joining the dinosaurs.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
First off, it means that now we're going to have yokel cops buying time on Arecibo to set up an interstellar speed trap...We clocked you going 18000 in a 25 zone.
Second off, we now have a new thing to fear, the Interstellar Space Dog. Let's just hope the hound that this bone belongs to doesn't think that the little rock we live on isn't a ball to play fetch with.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
The official release is here:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releas es/2000/kleopatra.html
Another picture and an animation of the asteroid are here:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/kleopa tra/
Brief, yes. Useful, perhaps.
I love this argument, I really do. Here *YOU* are bitching about how much this knowledge cost. Knowlege is invaluable. Yet you bitch at the apparent cost because people are starving in the world, true, many are. Many of these starving people don't have the internet either. Perhaps we should just get rid of the net until everyone is happy and well fed?
I know you are trolling, good job I guess, you got me. But the search for answers is a very important thing, the search for information is a very important facet of freedom.
What good can this knowlege do us? You might add?
I bring up this:
When Faraday showed the Queen these sparks of "electricity" It is said that she commented:
"Of what use is this electricity?"
To which Faraday replied:
"Madam, of what use is a baby?"
So if you are trolling (as I expect you are) good job. And before you lambast me about the starving people in the world, I have been to Africa and bult some of those people a medical clinic in the middle of "nowhere" as it were, I did it with my own money. Compassion and knowlege go hand in hand I think. I fear the ignorant.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Yet Another Not-So-Witty Quip Regarding Bone-Shaped Asteroid:
Say, isn't that the crusted-over remains of the Discovery?
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wcb
I care. I find this very interesting. I am not an astronomer.
As to why you are talking about radar... I dont quite see how thats relevant.
dateline 1:32am (EDT). According to observers stationed on the George Washington Bridge, a dog-shaped Egytian hieroglyph decended slowly over Fort Lee tonight, neatly locking itself on top of the former state of New Jersey.
"It was the darndest thing I ever saw," said one distant relative of Elian Gonsalez, who identified himself only as "Mark Anthony." "A dog-like figure came down at exit 68, then a cat a 70, a dancing girl with braids at 71, and then whoosh, all of Jersey was covered, in one big farting sound!"
Officials in the Guiliani administration did not return our requests for comment, but insiders in City goverment have informed us that the Major intends to reveal that is a direct descendent of Caesar at a press conference tomorrow, as well as that he called on Kleopatra to help him initiate his new "Clean Up New York -- and the rest of the World!" campaign. "In one fell swoop, he's eliminated the armpit of America -- no more chemical dumps, no more girls with big hair and nasal lisps. And wait 'till you see what he has planned for Connecticut."
In other News, officials at zoos in New York City and Long Island today reported a series of lion disappearances...
On the other hand, if the layer of loose stuff on the surface is thick enough, you could just dig a trench in it big enough to spin a wheel-type space station built of nickel-iron pipe (if it's metal-rich, you should have plenty to play with). Unless you want to hollow out a whole disk you have to forget about spokes... then you put a lid on the trench with enough clearance for a bit of wobble and cover it with the material you removed, forming a cosmic-ray shield. Spin up the wheel, artificial gravity.
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Click below for proof:
"asteroid"
Satellite of Love (of MST3K fame)
Those were some heavy trailer-homes if they were made out of cinder blocks! :-p
This site at
JPL</a> has more information on imaging asteroids
with radar. This has only become practical
relatively recently with newly installed equipment
at Arecibo and (to a lesser extent) NASA's
Goldstone radar telescope.
It looks like asteroids come in two shapes: "long
and thin" (a la the "dog bone" Kleopatra or "shoe"
Eros), or the more classic lumpy-round-thing look.
They seem to be about equally common, at least
among the asteroids we've imaged.
I think game designers and movie special-effects
people may need to make some revisions! But what
radio telescopes can't tell us is what happens to
a long-thin asteroid when you blast it; does it
turn into smaller long-thin rocks, or fragment
into roughly spherical chunks? I demand accuracy
in my arcade games!
In summary: I hope you are kidding, lots of stuff, summary, sig file.
I'm sorry.
This is really interesting stuff to me because of a couple of things that radar measurements can do that optical either can't or has difficulty doing.
1) Radar can penetrate clouds. Witness Magellan.
2) Since radar can do this, ground based radar doesn't suffer nearly as much atmospheric distortion as a normal telescope does.
3) Radar is an active system, so a radar observer does not have to worry about reflected sunlight providing illumination.
4) Radar observations can easily provide lots of info like rotation rate, etc. See here for examples.
5) Radar can also, given sufficient info, provde 3D maps. For an optical 3D map, you either need a laser altimeter or a stereo imager
Also check out this quote from a NASA press release about radar imaging of asteroid 1999 JM8:
""Our finest resolution is 15 meters (49 feet) per pixel, which is finer than that obtained for any other asteroid, even for spacecraft" said Dr. Jean-Luc Margot, one of the team members from Arecibo Observatory. "To get that kind of resolution with an optical telescope, you'd need a mirror several hundred meters across. Radar certainly is the least expensive way of imaging Earth-approaching objects.""
Certainly seems to me that radar is a very useful tool for observing near-Earth and even belt asteroids which could lead to later exploration and exploitation.
"There is no shot you can take that I cannot simply deny." - Ertai, wizard goalie
...but it took me ten minutes to stop crying.
(Yeah, right. As if I read MSNBC.)
More
Stupid
Nincompoops
Broadcasting
Crap
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
No, he meant Cleopatra:2525.
/me begins humming annoying rip-off theme song
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
.. but this made me think of the word "Vortigons" for some reason. Hmmm....
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
Greg Bear's Eon featured a very large hollowed out asteroid. He used one of the largest known asteroids, I'm sorry I don't remember the name. Wasn't Kleopatra, but it was even bigger. It's a great book, my favorite work by Bear.
And as one person already pointed out, Ender's Game had a hollowed out asteroid, but it didn't go into nearly so much detail.
Interestingly, Both books were published in 1985.
Anyone know of more giant hollow asteroid stories?
So, of course, someone has to bring this up...
Sounds like a job for distributed computing. What will get finished first? Imaging all the main belt asteroids, or RC5-64? My money is on the asteroids.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
I'm serious. We should hollow some asteroids out and make a kick-ass space station.
Solar power out there is about as good as on the surface of the Earth. Enough of it and we could melt some holes. Heck, by then we may have better nuclear power like a working cold or warm fusion.
Even an M type asteroid has some silicates in it, so that's where we get the oxygen, if we don't get it from an ice asteroid. Carbon is easy, we have too much of it in Earth's atmosphere anyway, CO + O2 makes an OK rocket fuel. We just take extra fuel along and have fuel cells producing CO2 for our plant life. Humans don't really need all that much nitrogen, just for amino acids and some less reactive component of the atmosphere. It doesn't take much.
I'm not proposing hollowing the ENTIRE thing out, just start hollowing... We'd have to pick a good spot, but that thing has thousands of miles of surface area. I'd worry about digging in and finding radioactive metals, I wouldn't want to build a colony near any uranium deposits.
It sure sounds like good thing to do in the 21st century. What else is there to do?
Free music from Jack Merlot.
So if you troll and no one feeds the troll, is it your fault if you starve?
I think it is based on your argument, because you obviously didn't troll well enough
MikeOC (aka Quincy[WRC]) KTRU DJ (91.7FM Houston, TX -or- www.ktru.org)
he is probably thinking about those 2 ppl who wrote those 2 dumb comments before him
as soon as someone writes "does it run linux?" or "can we run beowulf" it gets moderated up as funny. those comments should be moderated down as offtopic and not up.
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
according to the article its sed that the is a result of a collision. let say, a big planet collided with a mother of a comet made of iron, the collision causes one of the 2 objects to shatter, the "bone astroid" would be a result , but what sort of structure made it fragment it into the shape its in?
It was not my intention to troll. If I have, then I beg forgiveness. I am unfortunately unaware of the definition of trolling. If you wouldn't mind, please lift the 18 wheel TIP Systems(TM) truck of ignorance from my nasal bridge and allow me to see the truth. This also is not meant as a troll, though it may look like it is. I can't tell. In conclusion, it would be an excruciating amount of help if someone could fill me in on what trolling is. Thanks.
All of that, and you didn't even claim first post. :)
Get with the program!
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
--
Here's my mirror
Seriously, when do they send a couple of big ol' shuttles up there and convert this useless space rock into valuable space station materials?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
- Find a solid metal asteroid.
- Drill a hole down the length of it.
- Fill the hole with water.
- Plug the hole.
- Slowly heat the asteroid with solar mirrors.
- Eventually, the metal will be very plastic but not yet molten. At some point, the heat will reach the water.
- The water will boil, and the expanding steam will force the metal to expand like a balloon.
- If you were lucky, you'd end up with a very large metal ball-shaped shell. POOF! Space Station!
- Patch leaks.
- Pump full of atmosphere.
- Move in.
Yes, there's be lots of engineering challenges, but it's still a neat idea....phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Anyone know of more giant hollow asteroid stories?
Larry Niven discusses hollowed asteroids at great length in the Known Space series, particularly the Belter stories.
Oh yeah, and in Protector the Brennan Monster has hollows in his asteroid, IIRC.
Then Niven and Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye talks about old hollowed out asteroids, filed with mummified Moties.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series talks about hollowing out Phobos, which may have been an asteroid at one time before it was captured by Mars.
Arthur C. Clarke's Earthlight is about a war between Earth and the other planets, I think they mention asteroids in it.
Bester's The Stars My Destination has Joseph and the Scientific People holed up in some sort of asteroid.
George
It sure sounds like good thing to do in the 21st century. What else is there to do?
:-)
Oh, I can think of a few things...
- Find alternative fuel source(s)
- Find cure for cancer, diabetes, alzheimer's, etc.
- Figure out a way to bring government back to the people
- Promote the free trade of ideas
I could go on if you still need suggestions. If you are ever bored on a Sunday afternoon, gimme a call.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Remember when the ape throws the bone into the
air and it changes into a spaceship?
Well thats the bone!
Small packets, of course.
It looks like the NAIC which runs the Arecibo observatory received approximately 10 million dollars in grants this fiscal year. These grants helped fund not only this research, but research by more than 150 scientists who use the observatory each year. So if you assume that each scientist uses the same portion of resources, as a first approximation, this project cost about $67,000. Now compare that to NASA satellite missions which typically cost several hundred million dollars, and I think that this research has been very cost effective.
I would also keep in mind that much of that money goes to the staff which keeps the observatory, and other facilities operational. I count about 147 people on the directory, though I admit some are listed twice, this includes a scientific staff of about 24 research scientists, but most of the staff is made up of mechanics, electical workers, cooks, janitors, security, and staff for the visitor's center. So though it's true that many people are starving in the world, this observatory is giving people jobs so they can put food on the table.
So maybe it's better to view astronomical observatories in this way: We learn about the composition, physical processes, and origins of the Universe around us, and at the same time provide jobs for a lot of people.
Idol Star Astronomer
If it was not your intention to troll then I too am sorry for two reasons. One, I went after you unfairly if you really didn't mean to troll. Two, you actually believe everything you said.
While I can agree with you in some situations, there actualy are some highly intelligent people born in to the situations you describe who have no chance of getting away from them. These people also do not always bring thier situations on themselves. The fact that it hasn't rained in some areas of the world for years is not the fault of these people, nor is the fact that they can't leave. For you to suggest that the smart ones should eat the other weak people only highlights your ignorance on the topic. People who are malnourished and have no muscle mass like the ones you see, sitting around doing nothing, won't provide nutrition to someone else. In fact it would likely cost the person eating the other more energy to digest the other person then any energy they would gain from the nutrients in that person.
That is my take IIRC from what I have read. If I am wrong someone else please enlighten me.
MikeOC (aka Quincy[WRC]) KTRU DJ (91.7FM Houston, TX -or- www.ktru.org)
Note also that no actual photos are available - just computer reconstructions of radar echoes.
Suspending disbelief for a moment, this could as well be a generation-type starship... drive at one end, cargo/living space at the other end, a narrower structure holding both apart. And, of course, this would show up on radar as hollow spaces, smaller metallic "fragments", a metallic skin, and patterns which would be misinterpreted as "fractured" by anyone convinced that this must be a naturally-formed object.
That is my take IIRC from what I have read. If I am wrong someone else please enlighten me.
Actually no, you are quite correct.
Again having been to Africa your summation that they cannot escape their fate is correct. The problem is the opressive governments that rule these people. Since these people only have access to (limited) government education, all they know is propaganda, they are ignorant because they don't have the access to better education. Not that they would be able to exploit it anyhow: they are too busy trying not to die.
As per your comments on nutrition, those might be correct, it reminds me of "rabbit starvation". Still, I would hardly call canabalism a solution..
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
The rule is that if you are registered and you make those stupid comments you are generally ignored or moderated up. Downward moderation should be eliminated as a useless waste of moderation points. In a stupidity arms race, the stupidest often win.
Question: I laughed at this - does that make me a bad person?
All I can say is... woof!
It's quite obviously the bone thrown up into space at the beginning of 2001!
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
*lol*
This doesn't even look real! It makes those backyard UFO photos (tin pie dish upside down on a string) look that much MORE believable.
News? Hardly.... unless there's a giant space dog that's looking for this New Jersey-sized bone. Lets just hope he doesn't decide to bury it here on earth!
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Did anyone else boggle at the thought that this sucker is 135 miles long & 58 miles wide, and mainly METAL? Would it be cost effective to go mine this sucker?
I did not mean to troll. If I wanted to, I would do it anonomously :JP. I was kidding when I said they should eat each other. I probably wouldn't eat other people, and I doubt most others would. Even if it had nutritional value. I wasn't kidding about most of it. Science should always come before people, within reason. The people who live in rainless regions fall into the tragiccategory. I meant to imply that, but I can't remember what I said. I could look back, but I am exceptionally lazy. I still think that science should come before them. I had a good reason a second ago, and it made sense to me at least, but I turned my head to look at MTV news, and I lost the capacity for what seemed like rational thought.
Ever thought about how much New Jersey weighs? This asteroid would be a few orders of magnitude heavier, and you want to change it's velocity by how much?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Arecibo was originally built by the Air Force to study the effects of ionosphere on radio waves. It's conversion to a functiona radiotelescope involved massive amounts of modification. Since then the entire dish has undergone a bit by bit replacement to finetune it's resolution. Cornell operates the scope, but I believe NASA still picks up a sginificant chunk of the bills.
And since you don't have to escape a lot of gravity at launch, the rocket would be able to bring ridiculous amounts of material to Earth.
I want to be in the other hemisphere, a loooong way from any oceans, when it lands...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing